It goes with what Christopher Alexander understood about living architecture. How people use it matters. The whole point of pattern languages was the creation of a grammar where all possible ways in which patterns come together develop a valid, architecturally cohesive design. This allows the inhabitants themselves to make changes as their life and circumstances change, and as long as they follow the grammar, it will come out as a cohesive, functional design. Alexander also systematically studied indigenous architecture and went in with a background in mathematics. There is a reason his work influenced people working with software architecture and human-computing interactive design (but our computer systems and products does not realize the full potential of Alexander’s ideas).
There is a kind of bias at play, where we think the culture itself is rigid, and becomes out of date, and therefore, impedes progress. It does not have to be that way, and often time, the culture itself encodes ideas that are crucial. Furthermore, cultural practices can be understood or designed such that it is flexible and versatile — similar to Peru’s pre-Hispanic system of canals. If anything, it’s the bias of our modern worldview that tries to fix culture into the rigid structures just as it tries to create rigid solutions.
For a deeper reading on why that might be, I suggest: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-call...
I won't litigate strongly against this statement because its obvious this matters, but human interests and norms are not immutable and the mechanism to change it definitely involve doing things (at some scale) that can be seen as abnormal or against (some) human interests. This tension and how it's resolved is the evolutionary pressure.
> where we think the culture itself is rigid
Well, the article cites the example of the Spanish failing for decades to irrigate the land because they dismissed the existing culture. Seems like the author has a rigid view of culture, because it seems clear to me that the syncretic culture post-conquest (Spanish ruled) was one radically different to indigenous or european ones.
So I probably shouldn't have said "aligned to human interest", because the scope of that interest is different among individuals (for different aspect of their life). That scope is dynamic. It could be self-interested, or interest of the immediate family or community they belong to. Thank you for bringing that up.
As far as the rigidity -- I appreciate your view and comment on this. I admit too. It may be obvious to you that the post-conquest syncretic culture is different, but it was a blind spot for me. I didn't even think about that. I say all of this to say that the lens (view) in which we see all of this isn't itself always seen by the person looking through it. In my case, I know about the idea and I can still miss it.
However, I have learned tbat many arguments that talk past each other happen because the view from which people argue from are not always called out or clearly defined. There are things that can be dismissed simply because it doesn't fit the view.
Re-reading your original comment -- perhaps it's better stated that, while you don't have to couple the original culture and technology, for something to be practiced now, those technologies need to be coupled with the current-day culture.
Nearly every culture has a tradition of parables; Tales that reveal important truths by metaphor. Whether they be about how to interact with others, how to motivate and treat yourself, or of outside dangers.
Religion serves an important teaching purpose. Most have converged a lot; There's a lot of truths that are universal. Still, they're not all created equal. You probably shouldn't hate someone just because of their religion... Unless they're part of a death cult.
e.g. even amongst the civilized Greeks and and Romans foreigners who had no legal ties to their city states (some form of citizenship or diplomatic treaties with their home city) were basically treated as subhuman and could be enslaved and murdered with little to no repercussions.
Universalist religions extended that to vast geographic areas and established some basic shared principles and trust between strangers e.g. in the middle ages somebody from Scandinavia could travel to Rome on their own with relatively (of course still significant) little risk of being robbed, enslaved or murdered while being able to rely on hospitality from complete strangers/foreigners during his trip.
Of course the Romans already had something similar by the 100s AD (non citizens and slaves were of course excluded) but political systems are much more fragile than religions.
“Culture is just the way things are done around here”
Peer review is culture. Work place legislation is culture.
The article argues that trying to extract technology and reapply it, without the culture, is a fools errand.
It’s trivially true: you can’t just teach some people to code and expect them release an app that can scale to millions of users. It requires culture to function and deliver.
We need to understand the culture required to deliver the technology, not just the technology itself.
I for one would be very interested to hear about how different types of labour organisation were required to deliver their water.